Summer Reading Mission Somewhat Accomplished

I had such grand visions of my summer reading this year. I was going to read a Shakespearean play each week, delve into new series, expand my repertoire of world classics, revisit some Brit Lit I hadn’t perused since college, etc, etc. Well, needless to say, I didn’t quite get through the stacks I made for myself, but I do have a few worthy reads on which to comment.

First new love…The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns both by Khaled Hosseini. I’ll be honest I had avoided these titles because they were New York Times best sellers. I’ve had great disdain for The Times ever since they made a separate category for Children’s Literature just because J.K. Rowling was dominating the main list. So what if the vast majority of Americans are fascinated with Mr. Potter? He is pretty fantastic, but I digress. The Kite Runner and Splendid Suns both deal with coming age stories set in war torn (or tearing) Afghanistan. Kite Runner focuses on a young man’s journey, Splendid Suns on two female characters. While both storylines are largely fictional, there are nuggets of truth throughout. I literally could not put either book down and breezed through them in less than a week’s time. In a culture climate of misunderstanding regarding terrorism and Muslims, I’ll admit I was ready to chalk any Middle Eastern society up to Al Quaeda, Taliban-loving creeps. These books, though fictional, gave me better insight into the struggles facing some of these nations who are being destroyed by warring factions. At the heart of each novel are stories about human trials and suffering with which any of us could relate.

The second series I’ve taken a liking to is much more light hearted. A friend of the family introduced me to the Amelia Peabody series by writer Elizabeth Peters. Peters is a pseudonym for Barbara Mertz, an Illinois native who holds a PhD in Egyptology from the University of Chicago. She has written some 20 books under Elizabeth Peters all focusing on murder mysteries set in Egypt. The main character, Amelia Peabody, is a British lady who discovers a love for archeology and a certain archeologist in the first story, Crocodile on the Sandbank, published in 1975. Subsequent titles follows Amelia’s escapades throughout Egypt and surrounding areas solving mysteries with her husband and son. I’ve read the first four books of the series so far and am pleased to have found an American author who writes like she’s British! Even though the main cast of characters repeats itself in each story, supporting roles introduce new faces and each story has new secrets to flesh out. At this point I’d have to call it a cross somewhere between Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie. I find Amelia’s dry sense of humor, paired with her volatile, passionate husband, Emerson, to be engaging and entertaining.

Finally, I’ve just recently been introduced to author Jasper Fforde. He’s a Welsh author with two series I’ve come across. The first series features a character called Thursday Next who works for an agency called Jurisfiction which explores anomalies in the BookWorld. Basically she’s a special forces agent who helps to keep plots, characters, and literary devices in their places so that the Outlanders remain blissfully unaware that a “real” world exists within and between the pages of it’s beloved stories. I’m thoroughly fascinated with Fforde’s style and wit. Having a lit degree and working as an English teacher it’s rare that I find something truly new as far as storytelling goes. This guy’s got talent in that regard. His other series explores the underworld of Nursery Crime and features a main character, Detective Jack Sprat, who appears to do for nursery rhymes and fairy tales what Thursday Next is doing for the larger whole of literature. Haven’t started that series yet but I have the first book, The Fourth Bear sitting here waiting for me when I finish with Thursday.

Don’t Forget to Flush: A Review of The Last Airbender

The Last Airbender? Let’s hope so. If I had to sit through another 1 hour, 43 minutes of M. Night Shyamalan’s take on Nichelodeon’s Avatar series, I think I’d rather give birth again without an epidural. I’m really not even sure where to begin. A friend asked me to let him know what I thought was the worst part…um, the whole movie? I guess if I had to pick the absolute worst part, it would be the complete lack of humor. Obviously one of Sokka’s main roles in the cartoon version is the part of comic relief. His humor is responsible for some of the greatest one-liners from the series. In the live action film, not only is he not funny, the actor playing him gives one of the worst performances I think I’ve EVER seen on the big screen. Aang (or should I say “Ah-ng”, but more on that in a minute) is also pretty amusing in the animated stories and much of his humor stems from plain immaturity when Katara and Sokka first team up with him. Sure he’s the Avatar, but he’s also a twelve-year-old boy, a fact that is not lost on the Nickelodeon animation writers. The live action Ah-ng? Not funny, AT ALL, unless you count some of the stupid lines he’s given along the way like, “We could be friends, you know” spoken to Zuko at the North Pole. Umm, yea, about that, it takes a while of the hate-hate relationship, more than just one season, or in this case, one poorly developed film relationship, to decide they can be friends. I’m pretty sure that line doesn’t come until the end of season three in the cartoon.

So, poor humor? Check. What’s next? Oh yea, the name pronunciations. You would think that a film adaptation by the same studio that developed the original animated series would at least get the pronunciation of character names right…right? Not true. Aang becomes Ah-ng; Sokka becomes Soaka (maybe because Katara soaks him in the opening scene?); Iroh is Ear-row; and it’s the Ah-vatar, not Avatar. Seriously distracting.

Acting? I hesitate to even go there. We were all concerned about the casting choices having watched the trailers, but this goes way beyond looks. Now, I liked Dev Patel in Slumdog Millionaire and thought he did a great job with the character he played there, but as Prince Zuko? All wrong. Last I checked Zuko was seething with anger at this point in his Avatar journey, but Dev’s performance is hopelessly mundane and morose. I don’t think there was a good casting choice in this entire film, unless you count Appa and he’s barely there. Iroh is probably my favorite character from the animated version because he’s such a great blend of humor and emotion. The physiognomy of him in the film is all wrong first off, but we also don’t get to see the depth and variations of his role.

Storyline is probably the one area most of us expected to be disappointed going in, How do you put an entire television season in under two hours and do it justice? Not like this, that’s for sure. The one thing my son said when we were entering the theater is “They better not take out the Kyoshi Warriors.” I should have known that was going to be an omen of what was to come. No Kyoshi Warriors, a bad choice if they want to continue making the live actions. This is akin to taking Dobby out the Harry Potter films. How do you introduce the character a later time when he/she/it is more critical? And what about Roku? Nope, not there, but his dragon still is, and it is the dragon who dispenses all the crucial spirit world advice to screen Ah-ng. Hokey? Totally! Then there’s the addition of an Ozai/Zhao back story. Point, please? I guess to fill details, but seriously? Time wasted that could have been better spent on so many other left out aspects (Kyoshi, anyone?). Zhao’s plotting against Zuko was much better served on the sly in the cartoon, not out in the open with Ozai like in the film. I’d say it was done to make Ozai look as evil as he needs to be made, but it’s in some of these interchanges that we get an unsettling glimpse of both characters humanity. Zuko is supposed to be struggling with his humanity, not Ozai.

Then there’s the fact that season one was titled Water for a reason. What was that again? Water, you say? I guess that would mean Aang would be focusing on learning to water bend. Through the season on Nick, this is exactly what we watch him do, granted it’s among a host of other things, but he steadily grows in his water bending skills alongside of Katara and sometimes even better than her. The movie shows him barely trying, trying and failing, and always inferior to Katara. He doesn’t truly show any water bending prowess until the very end, and no, it’s not even in the traditional form of a sixty foot high Avatar water monster! Katara is also made to look like a water bending idiot for most of the length of the film, and there’s not even a sexist conflict with Pakku to look forward to. And while I’m on the subject of the end and the Northern Water Tribe, I should probably discuss Yue. Not gonna go there. Why? I’m not even sure where to begin. I realize she didn’t have a huge, multi-episode role in the animated series, but I think the filmmakers succeeded in making her almost worthless. Yes, she still saves the moon, but by the time we get there, we’re already so done with this film, I’m not sure we’d care if she did or not.

I could probably go on, but I think I’ve wasted enough energy on this asinine film already. I think I rather either (a) poke my eyes out with a dull fork, or (b) watch Kristen Stewart waffle between Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner, and if you know my opinions on the Twilight Series, that’s saying a lot.

Riordan’s Kane Chronicles Begin with The Red Pyramid and a glance at Scott’s Necromancer

I recently read my 12 year old son the latest Rick Riordan (Percy Jackson) book, The Red Pyramid. This children’s novel is the first in a new series begun by Riordan entitled The Kane Chronicles and it does for Egyptian mythology what Percy did for the Greek myths. Riordan’s writing style is much the same in his latest work which is good news for kids (and adults) who enjoyed reading the Jackson series. Again, at first glance, Riordan is far from original. This was an initial complaint of mine with his first series. I will save the tedium of regurgitating my post about Percy Jackson and the Olympians, but suffice to say that Riordan tends to read like a knock-off of other pieces of children’s literature already published. The Kane Chronicles for me began like a rip-off of Michael Scott’s series The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel. There is a pair of siblings, one boy, one girl, with parents who are not in their physical day-to-day lives. The siblings find out that they are not really whom they thought they were and have to be “awakened” to their true, magical natures. In the process of this awakening, they are forced to leave home and journey here, there, and everywhere, both domestically and internationally, and face battles of varying degree testing their abilities and their relationships with each other. They are helped and hosted by a variety of friends, family, and foes, and they are not always sure who they can trust. Both series use historical and mythological beings throughout, though the Riordan sticks with Ancient Egypt as it’s primary focus. So if you’ve already read the Scott series, is Riordan’s latest worth picking up? Yes…

I also recently finished The Necromancer, which is the fourth book in the Scott series (I think he has promised seven books in total, and there is an advertisement in Necromancer for the next installment, The Warlock). I have to say that I am liking the Scott books less and less with each one. The character development is poor at best and by the end of the fourth novel, I was so sick and tired of the same whininess in Josh, the lack of initiative in Sophie, the disagreements between the two, the distrust they feel for the Flamels, and their wavering between the “good” and “evil.” Scott brings several new historical or mythological characters into each storyline, but they are all over the board and the “relationships” he establishes between them are ridiculously improbable, even if they are all immortal. Prometheus should not be the brother of the Witch of Endor, who just happens to be married to Mars Ultor?? Machiavelli forms an alliance with Billy the Kid? As if these relational ties aren’t bad enough, Scott just keeps throwing the characters in without truly developing any of them. After four books, my head is spinning trying to remember who’s who and who’s with whom and where we left them last.

In retrospect, even though Riordan’s characters and storyline may have similarities to other young adult series out there, he does limit his characters and their relationships so that the reader has time to get to know them and empathize with their struggles. The relationships between the gods, goddesses, heroes, and now magicians are believable and in keeping with history or mythology. Our kids are actually learning by reading “for fun”…just don’t tell them that. What sold me on the latest Riordan in the end? I actually got teary-eyed over one character’s fate. That’s when I knew he had done his job well as an author.

I’ll be buying the next Kane Chronicle and will be listing my Scott books on Half.com for resale, never to pick up another…stick a fork in me there. In the meantime we’ve begun Artemis Fowl and so far I’m giving it kudos for originality, even if I’m struggling with a criminal protagonist. Guess I’ll get to teach more about the concept of the anti-hero anyway.

And in case some of you are wondering, I’m reading a fair amount of “adult lit” this summer too and will probably give a thumbs up, thumbs down review of the mass of it at the end.

Abe Lincoln as Buffy? Really? YES! (And some dreadfuls on the side)

Being a fan of quality, authentic vampire literature, I have to admit I was a little leary of the latest release by the author of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter certainly sold me with it’s quirky cover, or should I say, back cover with a grown President Lincoln holding a severed vampire head. P&P Zombies has not honestly been my favorite of the Quirk Classics, but I was interested to see what Seth Graham-Smith could do without having to intertwine his story with the original Austen. I was not disappointed! The parody-style novel begins reading a little like Dan Brown tripe with it’s “FACTS” page, but had me pleasantly amused nonetheless. Having unfortunately read all of Brown’s novels, I was worried I would find Lincoln too formulaic, but other than a shout-out to conspiracy theory (vampirism promulgated by the pro-slavery South), I found Graham-Smith’s style fairly orginal. The premise is that a modern day shop owner (Smith inserts himself as this character) is given Abraham Lincoln’s original journals detailing his secret life as a vampire hunter. The “history” of Lincoln’s early days on into his presidency is accurate to a point and each chapter begins with a legitimate quote from Lincoln’s speeches. Perhaps this why I enjoyed the book as much, if not more than, an Austen parody…I’m not a big history buff, especially when it comes to American history. The same can be said for my affection for American literature. I know it sounds terribly unpatriotic, but except for Austen, I’m a British lit fan at heart. Set Austen or American history alongside undead minions or sea monsters, though, and you’ve got me hooked.

The vampires here are predominantly evil, so fans of Stoker shouldn’t be too offended. There’s a slight sympathy evoked with one character, so fans of Anne Rice could probably find some satisfaction here as well. Meyer “fans”? Not sure I care one way or another what they think, but the well positioned actual Lincoln quotes will probably be lost of most of their vapid brains. I’m not sure even the dreadfuls would find a satisfying meal eating Meyer fans’ brains. (A little segue here…)

On to Dawn of the Dreadfuls, another Quirk Classic and the prequel to P&P Zombies. Here we meet the famous Bennet sisters before they reach fame, if not fortune, as slayers of the undead. I enjoyed this installment more than the original, probably because it doesn’t make use of Austen’s original text. The girls’ personalities are pretty true to form, the reader will get an unusual glimpse into Mrs. Bennet’s past, and the romance is kept to a minimum. Really, if there is an army of dreadfuls to slay, who has time for courtship and coming out parties? The primary antagonist (not a dreadful) puts Wickam to shame as a self-loving philanderer, as do the just desserts he receives in the end. I think at this point I’m successfully hooked on the Quirk line and will be preordering Android Karenina sometime this week.

L-O-V-E

I realize it’s a little cliché to be writing a blog about love on Valentine’s weekend, but it’s permeated my thoughts lately, and not in the way you might think. I was pondering how often people use this four letter word versus how often they actually mean it. Maybe the kids had it right when in response to their friend saying, “I love pizza!” they said “Then why don’t you marry it?” I know, it was so juvenile, right? Of course you wouldn’t marry pizza, DUH! But really, it makes a good point. What if we asked that question about so many of the people and things we say we love? Nothing drives me crazier these days than listening to high school girls professing their love for everyone and everything in their paths. What’s funny is the same friend they love SO MUCH this week is the one they are slandering the following week for anything from stealing a boyfriend to wearing the wrong clothes. And “true” teenage love? Don’t make me laugh! Saying “I love you” to a guy means even less than saying it to a friend most of the time. Especially when so many high school girls change boyfriends like they change hair color!

So what does it mean to love, to truly love? C.S. Lewis does one of the best jobs of tackling the topic in his book The Four Loves. He makes the distinction between four different Greek words for love and what each means. Storge is affectionate love that you might have for a favorite pet. It doesn’t necessarily actively love back, or at least it’s not going to tell you in words, but you have a feeling of warmth and it makes you happy. This type of love can also describe the love of a parent for a child. Phileo is brotherly love. This is the one you might feel for a biological sibling, but you might also feel for a friend “who sticks closer than a brother” (Proverbs 18:24). Eros is passionate love that is often associated with lust, but is perfectly moral within the bounds of marriage and coupled with the other loves. More often than not, this is what a lot of teenagers are feeling toward the opposite sex, and it shouldn’t be given reign outside a healthy marriage. The last love Lewis comments on is agape, the unconditional love Jesus asks Peter about in John 21. Peter doesn’t get it and neither do we most of the time. We are sinful and selfish creatures and unconditional love is a tall order. We can only do it through the love of Christ in us. I can honestly say even after being happily married for almost 16 years, I think the only person I faithfully love unconditionally is my child.

Maybe it’d be easier if we spoke Greek and our Facebook comments to each other read “Storge you!” or “I phileo you, mean it!” In the mean time, however, maybe we should just stop overusing a word that should have deeper meaning than we’re giving it. We should broaden our vocabularies and point out specific traits we appreciate about others in an effort to make them feel loved. In the words of Paul, “Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves” (Romans 12:9-10).

Vampire Stories You Can Respectably Sink Your Teeth Into

At the risk of this blog becoming dedicated to rampages on what’s right and wrong with the latest vampire novel, I have to give a shout out to a new discovery of mine (or my husband’s since he bought it for me). Vampire Stories is a collection of vampiric short stories written by none other than Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Who knew he wrote about more than everybody’s favorite cocaine addicted detective? Okay, maybe you knew he wrote more, but I was pleasantly surprised to find out he had this group of stories AND that he was friendly with Bram Stoker. Maybe Doyle would “get it” and give the vampire the qualities so many authors missed.

Only four of the twelve stories in this collection feature Mr. Holmes; the rest introduce unfamiliar characters in some slightly familiar vampiric legends. I was intrigued not only by the tales themselves, but by the endnotes explaining the different legends. Doyle’s writing style hovers somewhere between Stoker, Shelley or Conrad here: decidedly British with a light dose of the gothic where appropriate. I’ll admit that the ethnocentric American in me hadn’t thought much about different cultures having their own unique twists on this creature and Doyle’s collection brings life to these myths while keeping the vampire in his (or her) rightful creepy place. Definitely an enjoyable read for fans of the original Dracula.

Not Another Dumb Blonde

I’m not a twit just because I’m blonde, even if I occasionally have blonde moments. True, I don’t always communicate verbally/orally as well as I would like. Yes, I get tongue-tied and say dumb things on occasion, but it doesn’t make me vapidly void of intelligence. Sometimes I just honestly have too much running around in my brain and it dumps out of my mouth in a kind of word vomit that doesn’t always make the same modicum of sense as in my head. I prefer writing so I can take the time to think through the best words possible and so they don’t come out in a bunch of gobbledygook. Yet day after day, I put myself out there in the wide world of oral communication in front of the harshest of audiences…and sometimes I probably sound like I don’t know what I’m talking about. There’s a light in the attic, I promise, but sometimes it has a hard time making it down through the rest of the house.

While I’m dispelling the dumb blonde myth, I might as well tackle the misconception that women who choose to stay home with their children have jelly for brains. I’ll admit that there were a few years when I wondered if I’d ever have another educated conversation. I’m sure a few brain cells committed suicide as I pondered things like why Blue the puppy couldn’t speak English, but the side table drawer could? And, really, since when do salt and pepper make paprika? Or cinnamon for that matter? I’ve come a long way since Nick Jr. but then again, I’m reading a world famous adolescent book series for the third time…go figure. While these moments may have very well made my brain turn to mush, fighting the less than pleasant battle of raising a child with a brain injury and resulting learning disabilities has probably made me smarter. You simply cannot advocate for a child in the world of pediatric neurology without knowing some serious terminology. Yes, I’ve been known to use the analogy of the basal ganglia being like the “peach pit” of the brain, but I can also tell you a mind-numbing amount of facts about all the different lobes and what they control. I’ve read medical school textbooks borrowed from friends, and neurology journals. When I didn’t get the answers that made sense from our doctors I searched high and low and finally found them in a study done in Germany and published in an abstract that was like looking for the proverbial needle in the haystack. This school year I am writing my own curriculum to help my dyslexic son become not just an average writer, but a critically thinking writer prepared for the rigors of middle school, high school, and college. Being a mom has hands down been some of the best education I could have ever paid for and it’s taught me how to specialize in some very odd fields.

I’m not afraid to admit I don’t know everything, but don’t call me dumb. Only fools think they have nothing left to learn. Good teachers admit that sometimes they learn more from their students than they give away. So keep telling the jokes…but be careful not to judge every blonde book by her cover.